Ethernet network redundancy is an important feature for access providers to secure the availability of the services offered on the access network.
Ethernet network redundancy is the ability of the network to survive a link failure or a node failure by providing an alternative data path when the fault occurs.
Ethernet network redundancy can be achieved using different protocols, e.g.:                Link Aggregation (IEEE 802.3-2005)        STP (IEEE 802.1D-2004, and IEEE 802.1Q-2003)        EAPS (RFC3619)        
Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) can provide node fault protection, however with high convergence times.
Further, Ethernet Automatic Protection Switching (EAPS) is able to provide node fault protection, however EAPS is designed for ring topologies and based on defining a master node to control the direction of the traffic flow. Further, EAPS is not easy to implement in Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks and is not easily deployable, since EAPS requires predefining the VLANs used within an EAPS domain, which means that the user must stop all the services before a new VLAN can be added to this domain.